Satoshi Poker Goes Under the Hammer

Bitcoin-only poker site Satoshi Poker is up for sale in a public auction after owner Bart van Oort admitted he did not have the resources to make it profitable.

Satoshi Poker was started in April 2013 and, for many people, was their first experience of playing poker for Bitcoin. Now the owner of the site – Bart van Oort – has announced that the site is up for sale to the highest bidder to enable him to focus on more lucrative projects.

Van Oort is selling the site in fully operational mode and says Satoshi Poker provides a solid foundation for anybody intending to run a Bitcoin poker site (Infiniti Poker please take note). He admitted that Satoshi Poker is not generating a lot of revenue at the moment, but the site has the potential to be something big if the right person has the time and money to put into it.

4,648 Registered Players Could Lift the Site

Despite the varying fortunes of the crypto-currency, Satoshi Poker has 4,648 registered players – many of whom joined the site for the easy-to-beat freerolls that were once hosted on the site, but who subsequently chose to deposit funds on the site to take part in more of the action (apparently 1,690 players have accounts with BTC in them).

In his sale announcement Bart van Oort forecasts that if a media-savvy owner with a new vision and a budget was to offer some form of promotion to those registered with the site, Satoshi Poker could develop into an excellent business opportunity. Although the public auction was intended to last for two days, Van Oort admitted that no official bid had yet been made, although he was in talks with several interested parties.

Going Once, Going Twice …

Any new interested parties would have to bid in excess of the reserve price of 30 BTC (around $15,000 at the current exchange rate of $500/BTC), but for the money the new owner would receive the Enterra Poker desktop client package and software license, a custom-built backend to securely process Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals, and a second backend for handling referral and affiliate income.

With monthly operational costs of $118.50 and nearly a $1,000 in operational revenue each month, the site will be in profit from the time a new owner acquires it; however Van Oort reckons that – with no marketing budget available to him – he is no longer in a position to dedicate any more time to Satoshi Poker.

Interested and Want to Find Out More?

Full details of the sale, Bart van Oort´s contact details and the specifics of the auction can be found on the BitcoinTalk forum; although interest parties might want to consider that Bitcoin is becoming an increasingly accepted deposit option on other online poker sites (the Winning Poker Network started accepting Bitcoin in January this year) and the volatility of the crypto-currency still frightens many online poker players who consider exchange values when calculating their ROI.

As a Bitcoin Poker information website, we would like to wish Bart van Oort and the new owners of Satoshi Poker the very best of luck in the future.